Rosy is a user-friendly platform that helps estate sale companies attract, retain, and grow their buyer base while optimizing operations and increasing revenue. We set out to modernize the estate industry for the digital economy.
Role
Cofounder, CPO
Company
Rosy
Date
2022-24
Intro & background
Cofounding a company is something that taught me a lot. I was regularly forced outside my comfort zone, and I spent countless hours doing everything I could to succeed. And although we haven’t crushed it (Rosy still quietly exists), the experience and knowledge my cofounder and I have gained is priceless. For context, Rosy was founded out of my desire to improve broken experiences. I’ve been shopping estate sales since attending my first one with my mom and grandma in 2015. They are fun, and you can find some cool one-of-a-kind items. However, over time, I got frustrated trying to attend sales due to the effort and (wasted) time it involved. I also noticed how poorly run most sales were and how the liquidators (more on them later) lacked sufficient technology. I continued to think about how technology could better serve this industry, and eventually, I dove into discovery and research. That work led me to partner with my cofounder, Jared, to build the industry’s first vertical B2B SaaS platform, which you can learn more about below.
To summarize some additional points: We went through the fundraising ringer. We applied to YC and scored the infamous interview—sadly, we did not get accepted. Our pitched deck was quickly circulated, and we pitched to over 20 well-known VCs. Unfortunately, we almost always heard the same thing: It’s a great idea and we love what you’re doing, but the market (TAM) is too small and the numbers don’t make sense to invest. This did not stop us. We relied on savings and some freinds and family money to build our MVP, which led to our first customer.
The vision
Power estate sale companies to attract, retain, and grow their buyer base while optimizing operations and increasing revenue.
Objective (1) —
Create a convenient attendance process that attracts more buyers while capturing important data.
Objective (2) —
Give liquidators better marketing solutions to increases buyer loyalty and improve retention.
Objective (3) —
Develop an efficient inventory tracking system that optimizes pricing and allows for expanded revenue opportunities
The problem
For years, estate sale companies have operated without meaningful technology. However, as competition and buyer expectations rise, companies are struggling to grow.
Defining and outlining the market and opportunity:
Discovery & research
Below are some of the methods and approaches we used to develop empathy, understand problems, and uncover opportunities (certain details have been intentionally omitted):
✔️ Competitive analysis
✔️ Customer surveys and interviews
✔️ Survey analysis (external and independent sources)
✔️ Partnered with liquidators and tested prototypes
✔️ In-person observation studies
Assumptions
We believe companies can attract more shoppers and, in theory, increase sales revenue by using a sales attendance process that is more convenient for shoppers and captures valuable (marketing) data.
If we can effectively capture shopper demographics, contact information, and shopping habits, we believe we can give sellers a better way to engage with shoppers and market sales, and inturn increase profits.
If we can support key steps within the lifecycle of a sale, then we can promote meaningful features that promote growth for us and the companies we support.
The product
Improving the attendance experience
This was our Trojan horse. We believed that if we could own the attendance process for estate sale businesses, it would increase attendance and enable companies to capture valuable data that they could leverage through our marketing suite. Excluding Rosy, there are several (archaic) methods businesses use to manage sales entry: In-person signup sheet (33%), Line formation (58%), Numbers we provide (30%), Other (7%). This mixed usage across the industry often leads to shopper confusion, wasted time, arguments, frustration, etc.. Shoppers have been known to avoid sales depending on the attendance procedure a company uses.
Solution: We took certain aspects of the existing methods, and moved it to an online system. Shoppers can easily understand when sign-up opens, meaning the time the online attendance list opens, and they can add their info and get their entrance position from the convenience of their home. They show up as directed the following day and shop. Businesses grow their marketing lists, since we require shoppers to input some basic details to attend a sale.
The sale signup page. These unique pages are configured inside Rosy’s dashboard and is what
shoppers see when they want to signup (attend) a companies estate sale.
Mobile signup flow for shoppers; To attend a specific sale, shoppers use this to signup for an entry pass.
New sale setup flow
Setting up a new sale in the dashboard utilizes a simple wizard flow with default inputs and custom fields, making the sale setup process quick and easy.
Managing sale details
Once a sale is created in the dashboard, it generates a custom sale signup page and unique link. That link is used and shared across social channels to promote and capture attendance.
Shoppers who signup to attend a sale are stored in a shoppers list.
This list has a number of filters and shoppers get profile pages.
Outcomes
Companies using our signup process grew their shopper list an average of 500% MoM.
Seeing that shoppers overwhelmingly preferred this new process was validation.
Improving public perception for businesses (Reviews)
As mentioned above, our attendance process allows for some downstream value adds. Shopper reviews are one of those things. As we developed our MVP, we noticed a trend: companies wanted to increase their positive ratings across key platforms like Yelp and Google, but it was hard to do, and negative reviews stuck out like a thorn. So much of this industry and winning business is about reputation, and so we wanted to help businesses improve that.
Solution: Send a post-sale email to customers who attended the sale (we have the signup data), thanking them for their business, while asking for a quick review and feedback. We enabled shoppers to quickly and easily provide a rating, with an option to add additional feedback. IF the review was positive, we would immediately prompt the shopper to share that feedback publicly on the business’s preferred platform. However, if a shopper had a bad experience, we became a filter for the occasional negative rant. 98% of people who left a negative review using our system, which is entirely private, didn’t choose to leave a negative review publicly.
Post sale review emails
We implemented a sale review request email that is automatically triggered 2 days after a sale. Because our attendance process captures important shopper information (ie email) we can send this email and collect valuable feedback from shoppers.
Easy to share review form
We made it easy for shoppers to provide feedback. We prioritized a star rating system that rates their overall experience, while allowing for “open” feedback at the shoppers discretion.
More (positive) public reviews
The feedback flow is “smart”, meaning that if a shopper leaves a positive review (4 or 5 stars), we prompt them to share that same review on a companies public channels. Shoppers won’t see this if a negative review is captured.
Outcomes
Positive reviews shared across public channels increased around 30% (avg.), while negative reviews decreased by over 90%.
Targeted email and marketing tools
Website builder
As we conducted sales calls and gathered leads, we noticed a trend across the industry: very few companies had functioning websites. And those who did suffer from a poor experience. Our research indicated that over 40% either didn’t have a website or had a broken URL. In an industry that earns business through trust, a business without a functioning website is bad business. We decided to unpack this further and talked to as many business owners as possible. Key insight: Companies without websites said they wanted one, but lacked the time and resources to manage a website.
We felt there was an opportunity to capture customers with this “add-on” feature. A light-weight website builder that essentially builds itself. Because businesses expressed the lack of time or resources as a barrier, we designed an experience that reduced the hurdles to having a complete, nice looking, and easy to use/manage website.
One-page design layout
For the first iteration, we built a simple but elegant one-page solution that met the needs of most businesses. Anchor links in the main navigation scrolled people to key sections.
Defualt content sections
We reviewed hundreds of company (liquidator) websites and noticed some patterns. In particular, we found that navigation and naming conventions rarely differed. So, to make the setup process easier, we created pre-assigned sections. Users can easily change the name, reorder the sections or turn-off unwanted sections.
Design panel - make it yours
We didn’t want users to overthink the design, so we created some basic guardrails. To start we provided a light and dark theme with a list of color options for both. The feedback on this control within the design was well recieved.
